Students sit outside the Butler Library on the Buffalo State College campus in Buffalo, N.Y., this month. / Charles Lewis, AP

by Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

by Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

In a case of state and federal policy catching up with higher education technology, it may be getting easier for college students to get credit for coursework taken online.

â?¢ California's Senate is debating a proposal that would allow students at public universities to receive college credit for taking faculty-approved courses online when classrooms fill up, even if the classes are being offered by private vendors.

â?¢ State higher education officers across the nation are developing reciprocity agreements that would cut through red tape that discourages colleges from offering online courses across state lines.

â?¢ And the Education Department this month gave its blessing to online programs that award college credit based not on how much time they spend in the classroom, but on what they know and can do.

In all three cases, the goal is to create new ways to help more people - tech-savvy young adults and older full-time workers alike -- complete college, a goal set by President Obama shortly after he took office and embraced by a number of key higher education leaders.

"We just can't accomplish that with the current model," says Rachel Fishman, an education policy analyst at New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. "You're going to need these flexible pathways so ... we can start inching that needle toward completion."

Just over half of students who start four-year bachelor's degree programs full time finish in six years, and fewer than three in 10 who start at community colleges full time graduate with an associate degree in three years, according to Complete College America, a national non-profit that seeks to increase the number of Americans with certificates or degrees. The numbers are even lower for part-time students.

Massive Open Online Courses, popularly known as MOOCs, represent just one example of how educators and entrepreneurs are challenging traditions such as the academic credit hour, grades or classroom-based lectures.

College for America, which opened its virtual doors in January and broke ground this month when the Education Department deemed it eligible for federal financial aid, awards college credit through direct assessment rather than grades.

Students, working on their own schedule and at their own pace, practice various skills until they can show mastery of 120 competencies, such as the ability to negotiate and distinguish fact from opinion.

"There's no grade inflation and no sliding by," says Southern New Hampshire State University President Paul LeBlanc, who came up with the concept in 2011. College for America, which operates as a division of the university, hopes to award its first associate's degree in September. Annual tuition is $2,500; published tuition and fees for two-year colleges averaged $3,131, according to the College Board.

Northern Arizona University and the University of Wisconsin System also are experimenting with similar competency-based courses and programs as part of a pilot project.

A key hurdle is approval from a regional accreditor, a third-party endorsement of academic quality that is required for a provider to be eligible for federal student aid.

Quality assurance is the primary sticking point for opponents of a controversial California proposal that would allow students at public state colleges and universities to take faculty-approved online coursework for certain core courses if a comparable course is not unavailable through the state public colleges and universities. At a hearing this week, the bill's author, Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, said the goal is to help students graduate from college in a timely fashion. Last fall, he says, an estimated 470,000 California community college students alone were stuck on waiting lists to get into the classes they need.

But a coalition of faculty argued that the proposal would lower academic standards, and exacerbate a divide between rich and poor students. Their recommendation: increase funding to public colleges and universities so that there are enough seats in classes that students need.

The California Senate is scheduled to vote on the proposal next week. Michelle Rhee-Weise, a research fellow in higher education at Innosight, a think tank in Silicon Valley, says the current activity is just the beginning.

"Right now a lot of the innovators are trying to work within the old system," she says. "Once some of these more traditional aspects of higher ed start crumbling, a bit, you'll start to see these transformations taking hold a little bit more quickly."